Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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Fair enough. I will take that. I do acknowledge that the world is moving on in terms of going cashless, tapping and all the rest. I know of owners of pubs and restaurants who are talking about going fully cashless and a lot of places are similar. The banks need to bring some customers on a journey in terms of technology because these people are less comfortable with debit or credit cards, still like the feel of notes and view the technology as a black hole. In ten or 20 years time those people will not exist in the same way that most people do not write cheques very often anymore and use other ways of paying such as electronic funds transfer, EFT, or whatever. I know of a school that opened a post office account because its bank did not deal with cash except on a Friday. The school took such action because when it got cash between Monday and Wednesday it had nowhere to go with the money. The banks may say that customers have voted with their feet but customers have felt compelled to vote with their feet because banks have made accessing banking services fairly difficult. If one finds that there are 40 or 50 people queuing in a bank when one wants to make a transaction then one will not queue too often and will find other ways to bank. There is a bit of a carrot and stick approach. Many of the people that I have met, who are perfectly reasonable and ordinary, do not feel welcome in their branch but that is probably the way it is going to go. In terms of what we did for the banks as a State and nation, and the hit we are still taking in terms of paying out, sometimes people are surprised to realise, as I mentioned in the earlier session, that there are almost 1,000 people working in AIB who earn over €100,000 each. We got those figures. They may only be 9% of 10,000 people or whatever but it is still a lot of people earning a lot of money for a bank that cost the State a fair bit of money. Maybe in the end it will not cost too much but certainly we took a lot of hit for it at the time, and certainly other banks did too.

The Department of Finance still has a stake in a number of the banks. It has a very significant stake in PTSB and AIB, and a smaller stake in the Bank of Ireland. In terms of the relationship between the valuation of the banks, which ultimately is to all of our benefit as a nation, and the culture, the Department has a role to make sure that the banks do what they do. The Department probably has a role to protect the shareholding on behalf of the Minister, who is the shareholder, on behalf of all of us who benefit if the bank shareholding increases in value and will have lesser resources if it does not. What relationship does Mr. Tobin see between the valuation of the banks and their culture?